Report: Facebook Hires Top Antitrust Lawyer to ‘Prepare for War’ with Trump Administration

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images21 Nov 2018

Facebook hired Department of Justice antitrust chief Kate Patchen, consider the top antitrust lawyer in Silicon Valley, in a move which Business Insider claims could be a sign the social media giant is “preparing for war with Donald Trump’s administration.”

According to Business Insider, Patchen, who worked at the Department of Justice for fourteen years, “joined Facebook as director and associate general counsel of litigation,” changing her LinkedIn to reflect the change this month.

Business Insider claimed the hire was potentially “a sign” that Mark Zuckerberg’s company is “preparing for war” with President Trump and his administration if it does begin to pursue antitrust allegations against the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe.

“Patchen’s hire comes in the same month in which US President Trump said his administration was ‘looking at’ antitrust proceedings against tech giants Google, Amazon, and Facebook,” the news outlet declared, adding that it “is not the only sign that Facebook is beefing up its legal bench amid the threat of hostilities from the White House.”

This month, President Trump claimed to be “looking at” whether Big Tech companies, including Facebook, were violating any antitrust laws.

“I do have a lot of people talking about monopoly when they mention those three companies in particular,” declared President Trump, referring to Google, Facebook, and Amazon. “It’s certainly something that we have looked at. That doesn’t mean we’re doing it, but we’re certainly looking.”

In August, President Trump also warned Facebook to be “careful,” expressing, “I think what Google and what others are doing – if you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people… You can’t do it.”

“I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful,” he continued. “It is not fair to large portions of the population.”